Pryor: Military service makes Tom Cotton feel “entitlement,” or something

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 8:41 am on March 5, 2014

The irony of this attack on Rep. Tom Cotton by Mark Pryor is so huge that it’s impossible to overstate. Interviewed by NBC News while fighting an uphill battle to retain his Senate seat, Pryor claimed that Cotton’s pursuit of his office came from a “sense of entitlement” from having served in the military, emphasis mine:

“Some people say I’m a young man in a hurry. Guess what? They’re right. We’ve got urgent problems and I am in a hurry to solve them,” Cotton said when he announced his Senate bid.

The quick rise has won him an attack ad from Pryor, who says that Cotton has “blind ambition” and a sense of entitlement that will turn voters off, even considering his military background.

“There’s a lot of people in the Senate that didn’t serve in the military,” Pryor told NBC News. “Obviously in the Senate we have all types of different people, all kinds of different folks that have come from all types of different backgrounds—and I think that’s part of that sense of entitlement that he gives off is that, almost like, I served my country, let me into the Senate. But that’s not how it works in Arkansas.”

No? How does it work in Arkansas? Apparently, having your daddy be Governor and Senator first is a much more legitimate platform for entitlement:

If Pryor is going to hang on, it’s because to many of the voters here in Arkansas, he’s almost family. …

The Senate seat Pryor holds has been in his family for a total of three decades. His father is one of what they call the “big three” in Arkansas politics: David Pryor, who was governor and senator; Dale Bumpers, also governor and senator; and Bill Clinton, who was governor and, of course, president of the United States.

Notably, no one on the Morning Joe panel wanted to defend Pryor:

Notice the chyron? “Pryor’s father was Governor and Senator of Arkansas.” Not even the production booth missed the irony of someone trading on the family name lashing out at his opponent’s supposed “sense of entitlement.” Pryor was probably toast anyway, but this should bury him — and the family dynasty.